


Devotion

by chamsie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, considering the circumstance, literal snake voldemort, this is more pre-slash than actual ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-10 11:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12298518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamsie/pseuds/chamsie
Summary: It takes weeks for self-consciousness, for sentience, to return.





	Devotion

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Snake Named Voldemort](https://archiveofourown.org/works/433140) by [estalita11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estalita11/pseuds/estalita11). 



> I'll come back to edit it eventually, but I finally have most of what I wanted to write written down for this. :)

Mistakes.  

 

Tom Riddle may have made a great many of them, but Lord Voldemort had made only the single one. A costly one, to be sure, but a single mistake still.  That Halloween night at Godric’s Hollow had been a hasty miscalculation, his unease directing his hand too strongly.   Intelligence was correcting failure, and Voldemort was the most intelligent being he knew.  He was careful now, very careful, and he would not make such a mistake again.  

 

It was this arrogance which led Voldemort to cast the second mistake of his life.

 

In hindsight, the entire endeavour had been misguided.  

 

The ritual is failing.  Has failed.  He has only moments with which to realize this before the magic takes hold and he slips away.   

* * *

It takes weeks for self-consciousness, for _sentience_ , to return. He is hardly aware of himself, remembers snatches of time briefly between dreamy stretches of empty whiteness.

 

Cold.  Hunger.  Pain.

 

A _shift_.

 

There is warmth: a fireplace that crackles merrily and a lap that is soft and comforting.

 

He sees walls of stone and hoards of feet; recalls the sensation of slithering across vast distances to the chatter of so many bodies.

 

Every while there is the shape of a body, incredibly warm as he wraps around it gently; one from which he draws safety as he twines between legs and sheets and settles with a deep, body-encompassing peace. He is content in those moments, a feeling of satisfaction settled into his very bones in a manner that Voldemort the wizard has never felt (that _tomriddle_ the man has never felt).

 

He lives in this hazy mess, barely alive, barely anything resembling Lord Voldemort.  It is almost like dreaming, but Voldemort does not dream - not this way - and it continues on and on until one day he 'wakes’.

 

Suddenly, he is aware of a great many things at once. There is a bed, its ruby curtains drawn shut, and he is in it. The slightest gap lets in the weak morning sun, but also allows a chill to seep by - a chill which is there because someone forgot to shut a window. He is in a dormitory of boys, of stupid young children, and so this is only to be expected.

 

He takes this all in, mind working through each detail frustratingly slowly as he bridges the gap that has formed in his awareness from being a man in a beast when before he had been a beast pure and simple.  The change was abrupt and jarring, and he is sluggish while coming back to himself.

 

As his smudges of memory align into a vague narrative, a detail becomes increasingly clear.  He lies warm and sated in this bed, and beside him - hair askew, features slack as his chest rises then falls methodically  - is Harry Potter.

 

Harry James Potter.  

 

How this had come to be is still unclear.  He should be alarmed as Voldemort rarely does anything unaware or perhaps he should be pleased by this opportunity to strike.  First and foremost, he should _think_ , but any rational thought is lost - pushed to the back of his mind - as _fury_ colours his vision because he _remembers_.  

 

Months now, he had been Harry Potter’s snake.  He’d called the boy master, had curled up obediently night after night as his snake mind hummed docile. He had debased himself playing _pet_ to this child when Voldemort bowed to no being.

 

It is a grievance unlike any other and the absolute rage he feels is beyond any he can recall - his very existence seethes with it.

 

Potter is asleep.  Voldemort could so easily kill him now; could slither up the boy and _squeeze_ with the powerful coils of his body until the wretch gasped his last breath.  He could rear back and _strike_ at the soft skin of the boy's throat with the inhuman strength of his serpent jaws. He could so easily _tear_ into his weak flesh and smear the sheets crimson with his blood.  He even moves to do so, has gotten as far as rearing back with a hiss when - _NO_ \- his traitorous body freezes before the act.  It locks itself in place and refuses to move against the boy who has cared so lovingly for him these past months.

 

Yes...He remembers that too.

 

He remembers how calloused hands had held him carefully, how Potter had taken him in and kept him by his side.  He’d found the boy first, somehow, and like an _idiot_ the boy had let him in.  From when had Potter gained the ability to speak Parseltongue? How did the boy know Voldemort's birthright?  The snake had crooned at his human and Harry Potter had done the same back.

 

How?  Voldemort burns with his fury, feels the blood in his veins boil with wrath.  Harry Potter: a thief, a liar, a pathetic fool!  The boy has _stolen_ from Lord Voldemort - an unforgivable offense -  and yet his body betrays him.  He is frozen still.  He can no more hurt the boy than he would himself.  

 

The mighty Lord Voldemort, tamed.

 

_NO!!_

 

No, it could not be! Voldemort refuses the idea, rejects the very notion.  He is a man of power and greatness, a being of _invincibility_ that transcends the boundaries of human expectation.  He has seen sights no earthly man has seen, has traversed regions untouched by humanity.  He has unearthed treasures so old they’ve long been forgotten by history.

 

He has shifted mountains - the landscape! - with only his will power and the magical legacy left to him (the only legacy, apart from that of Slytherin, that was worth anything).

 

He is legend and divine power.

 

He is a force of nature.  

 

He has always meant to be _more!_

 

Yet he cannot kill Harry James Potter.

 

The warmth, the comfort, the inexplicable _contentedness_ that Potter had brought him. He cannot understand it - feels flummoxed and out of his depth, like the schoolboy he has not been for decades.  What has the boy done to him?  

 

He is ruined.

 

_Tainted._

 

He is subdued by foreign loyalty and utterly defeated at the unknowingly gentle hands of a mere boy.  It is the greatest irony that Lord Voldemort has been bound to Harry Potter.

 

Who is the creature he has become? He cannot be Lord Voldemort, not so long as he remains attached, weakened, and mind _(bodysoul)_ compromised by such alien emotion.  Who is he? _(What is he?)_

 

Harry James Potter is _ruination._  He has done the impossible; he has made Voldemort _bow_ at his proverbial knees.  A boy whose experiences and power are but a fraction of that which makes up the Dark Lord’s.  

 

He has tamed the snake.  

 

He has stolen what could never be stolen: Lord Voldemort's  _devotion_.


End file.
